


Watercolor Memories

by Ivillpunchyouinthethroat



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Ambiguous Relationships, M/M, ambiguous reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-12 22:17:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20571821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivillpunchyouinthethroat/pseuds/Ivillpunchyouinthethroat
Summary: “He owes me,” Renjun says even if he knows Jaemin won’t understand. He doesn’t remember. “You don’t get it. Donghyuck—you don’t know what his powers are really like."You never smell the sweet of them, the rot.How can you not smell it?





	Watercolor Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pyrophane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/gifts).
  * Inspired by [future metropolis heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19443424) by [pyrophane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/pseuds/pyrophane). 

> I cannot describe my excitement once I'd finished reading future metropolis heart. It was evocative and heartbreaking and the type of writing I fall in love with. Thanks pyrophane for coming up with such an awesome 'verse!
> 
> Also, you should probably read the original fic (it's amazing) before reading this remix as I don't think it'll make much sense if you read it by itself.

Jaemin walks in as Donghyuck winds his shackles around Renjun’s wrists.

The thin, fragile strings that stretch across his skin glow enough to burn Renjun’s eyes but they feel cold, feel _lifeless. _

Guards come in soon after but he still struggles, still kicks, still shoves, still tries to push the little of his magic that he has left past the barrier at his wrists. 

It doesn’t work.

Renjun didn’t really expect it too.

Jaemin stares at him through all of it, there’s a look on his face, not quite the usual disapproval. Renjun swells his magic again, but there’s barely more than flare of warmth in his arms and it dissipates quickly. Jaemin stares some more, shakes his head—

Reluctant acceptance, that’s what it was.

—but he’s already looking over Donghyuck’s way, lips already going soft from their frown.

Renjun wants to scream at him, at both of them.

_Don’t you know I’ll kill him one day?_

But he bites his tongue, bites back the burgeoning nausea that his dampened magic is already making him feel. It’s already starting to go stale, smell sweet like rot, the bands feel cold and clammy like dead flesh. It makes him sick. Donghyuck’s the real monster here. For what he can do.

For what he _did_ and still manage to keep Jaemin.

Renjun has no one, not anymore--

_But that’s not not quite true is it?_

Renjun stares, but Jaemin’s not looking.

_I’m going to kill him one day _Renjun thinks.

But his thoughts feel as empty as his magic.

He struggles harder, knees a guard in the stomach. Someone cracks the side of his head, he feels the warmth of seeping blood and he fades to black. 

***

He wakes in the medical ward. Pristine white walls and the smell of antiseptic sharp amid the still lingering smell of rot.

His magic is back, Donghyuck’s shackles are gone. Renjun might be a nuisance but he has power and that’s all NEO’s ever cared about. Too valuable to them.

That’s why Donghyuck was able to bring him in in the first place.

That’s why Donghyuck has been able to _keep _him, despite everything.

He looks around, a habit, and he’s too tired to be angry that he’d expected someone to be there with him.

But he wasn’t Donghyuck and he wasn’t Jaemin and the only person who’d looked at him like that was—

He gets up and leaves, the sweet smell of rot follows him.

***

He walks through NEO’s halls to his shared room with Jaemin. He doesn’t know what time it is—NEO wasn’t overly fond of things like windows in their blank hallways—but when he gets to their room, the door sliding opening with an almost silent hiss, Jaemin is already asleep. Moonlight peeks in through the curtain of their window.

Night it was then.

He sits on his bunk, pulls his knees up to his chest, stares at Jaemin’s turned back. He knows he won’t be getting any sleep tonight.

_I’m going to kill him, _Renjun thinks again, but his thoughts are hollow, empty like the absence of his magic had been.

Empty like Jaemin’s memories.

Renjun _remembers, _he remembers _everything._

_He’d wanted to._

_Not like Jaemin._

Across from him Jaemin stays silent through the night.

***

“What did you dream about?” he asks when Jaemin wakes.

“I don’t have dreams,” Jaemin responds, sluggish. Sleep still clings to him, softens his features. 

Renjun blinks slowly, feels his lids drag like sandpaper across sleep deprived eyes.

“Yes, you do,” he says. “You just don’t remember them.”

Jaemin stares at him, that almost not quite wrinkle at his brows.

_I promised, _Renjun thinks.

A whiff of rot.

_He promised._

***

They’re on a train to a hit, someone had asked for Kestrel specifically. They’d been given the mission details and Renjun could already tell the hit was going to be easy. Too easy. But Renjun had been itching to unleash his magic since Donghyuck had last bound it. Itching to feel it warm and _alive. _

The train speeds on, tunnel lights whizzing by like stretched neon taffy through the windows.

“So how would you do it?” Jaemin’s voice breaks through buzz of silence.

“Do what?” Renjun asks, not really paying attention, too focused on the lights. They reminded him of Donghyuck’s magic—

“If you had to kill me,” Jaemin says. “How would you do it?”

“Stop fucking around,” Renjun responds without much thought. “We have a job to do.”

—the lights remind him of the bands Donghyuck had woven around his wrists, the same one’s he’d woven around Jaemin’s head. 

The memory hits him then, he jolts, stiffens.

The feel of flesh under his palms, warm. He hadn’t used any magic, _he’d_ had asked him not to. The crack that’d vibrated up his bones when he’d twisted, the way his eyes had dulled as he’d died.

Renjun remembers but his thoughts are slow and tepid, smell sweet like—

“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it,” Jaemin keeps talking, startling Renjun out of his recollection, “you try to kill Donghyuck three times a day.”

And suddenly the memory is crystal clear, as if it’d always been there.

Renjun has no doubt it’s always been there.

“You shouldn’t expect me to treat you and Donghyuck the same way,” Renjun snaps. Jaemin might not remember anything, but _Jaemin_ hadn’t been the one to take those memories away.

Jaemin makes a face but doesn’t press the issue further.

Renjun knows he shouldn’t be disappointed.

***

The hit _is_ easy, but all Renjun can think about as he rends the terrified man into pieces is the way the flutter of _his_ pulse had felt under Renjun’s hands when he’d killed him, how it had sent ripples in layer of magic that Renjun had summoned to cover them.

***

They’re back on the train, but there’s no lights this time, just empty darkness.

“I wouldn’t use my magic,” Renjun speaks suddenly. He can’t get the memory out of his head. How warm he’d felt under his hands without the barrier of magic to dull the heat of his skin.

“Hm?” Jaemin asks, eyebrows lifted in question.

“If I had to kill you,” Renjun continues. “I’d use my hands. I’d snap your neck.”

A pause.

“I’m flattered,” Jaemin responds, but he’s smiling, he shouldn’t be smiling. Not if he knew—

“Have you done it before?”

Renjun doesn’t know what Jaemin is expecting him to say but he answers anyways.

“Just once,” he murmurs quietly, trailing off.

_He’d_ asked him too, and Renjun couldn’t say no to him, not to _him_.

“I held him while he died. It was very quiet.”

The only thing he’d heard as Mark had gone still was the humming of his own magic. But Jaemin wasn’t Mark, he’d never be—he’d never _want _to be. 

“You wouldn’t be quiet, though. You wouldn’t go quietly.”

Another pause, this one heavier than the last.

“Thanks, I think,” Jaemin says but there’s a question in his eyes that wasn’t there before, a hesitance, he slouches back in his seat.

“I’m gonna take a nap,” he says, abruptly changing topics. Renjun lets him. “Wake me up when it’s our stop?”

Renjun shrugs.

Jaemin looks at him, stares really. As if he was trying to uncoil all of Renjun’s thoughts into shapes that actually made sense to him. Renjun would welcome it. 

Maybe Jaemin would remember then, maybe Renjun would stop feeling so…strange sometimes, when the emotions his memories brought ebbed and flowed, when a detail went a little blurry.

Maybe if Jaemin remembered too Renjun wouldn’t feel as if his memories were water that slipped through the cracks of his fingers, no matter how tightly he cupped his hands.

Maybe he’d stop wondering if Donghyuck—

_No_

_He’d promised._

This wasn’t strange.

Jaemin doesn’t say anything else after that, just burrows down in his seat, gets comfortable, closes his eyes.

Renjun turns and looks out the window again but it’s just as empty as before and it makes _him _feel empty. Just like Donghyuck’s magic had done.

It’s not long before he’s looking down at Jaemin again and he knows the exact moment Jaemin actually falls asleep because of it. His body relaxes further into his seat, his breathing goes slow, even.

Renjun feels his fists tighten.

For all that Jaemin worried about Renjun killing Donghyuck, he was remarkably unconcerned for his own wellbeing around Renjun. Renjun scowls.

Too easy, too _trusting_.

_Jaemin_ would be quiet if he reached over and snapped his neck, he wouldn’t even know Renjun had been the one to do it.

Not like—

Renjun shoves the thoughts away.

Jaemin wasn’t Mark.

He’d never want to be.

Jaemin shifts suddenly, body going from lax to unbearably tense. His eyes flicker rapidly under his eyelid, he takes a ragged breath.

“Jisung,” he whispers.

Renjun’s eyes widen.

He smells rot.

***

Jaemin doesn’t say anything the rest of the trip, just sleeps, only waking when Renjun tells him they’ve arrived.

Renjun is calm as they enter the station, as they leave it, as they walk away. He waits, but Jaemin doesn’t say anything else. He speaks before he can stop himself.

“Who’s Jisung?”

_He’d promised _but this wasn’t on Renjun, _Jaemin _was the one who’d said his name.

“Who?” Jaemin asks, confused, a little exasperated, as if Renjun was asking about a random stranger out of the blue.

“How am I supposed to know?” Irritation seeps into his voice. “You’re the one who was saying his name in your sleep.”

Jaemin stares at him like he’d stared back at the train, like he was trying to figure out how Renjun’s brain worked. As if Renjun was a bit of a stranger.

Renjun shouldn’t let that sting as much as it did.

“I don’t know anyone called Jisung.”

“Yeah?” And his voice has an edge.

Jisung. He’d said _Jisung, _he remembered even if only in dreams he _remembered, _despite all Donghyuck had done—

_He promised._

His voice loses its bite, all of a sudden he’s just tired.

“Then why are you crying?”

Jaemin’s brow furrows as he drags fingertips across one cheek, across a tear track. His eyes widen as he looks down at his hand.

Something flares bright in Renjun’s second sight then, bright like the shackles Donghyuck had put around Renjun’s wrists but flaring around Jaemin’s head instead.

Magic_._

_Donghyuck’s magic._

“You do know him,” Renjun says, heart beating faster now.

_They’d both promised_

But this was the only way he would _know_.

“Promise you’ll remember this.” Renjun says, stopping from his walk, gaze boring into Jaemin’s. “Jisung. Today, I asked you about Jisung.” 

Jamin frowns, his fingers rub the wetness of his tears against each other almost without conscious thought.

“Sure, okay,” Jaemin says slowly, as if he was placating a child or is if he was actually going to try. “I’ll remember it.”

Renjun wants to rail at him, wants to shout, want to tell him _that’s not good enough!_

_But he’d promised. _

He backs off.

That was all he’d allow himself today.

He keeps walking, hears Jaemin pick up the pace behind him.

“You’re wrong, you know,” he says.

He’ll give himself this one last thing.

“About what?”

“Everything.”

At least he hopes.

***

They’re at their next assignment.

Jaemin never mentioned Jisung again and Renjun isn’t going to be the one to bring it up.

_He’d promised._

Jaemin changes into a server getup as Renjun sets up surveillance.

Why Kestrel was deployed for a surveillance op he doesn’t know but he also doesn’t ask. He wasn’t at NEO to ask, he was at NEO to do what he was ordered to.

Just like he’d told Donghyuk when he’d first brought him in.

It was another promise he intended to keep.

“Do you think you’ll ever get married?” Jaemin asks out of the blue, doing up the last button on his uniform.

Renjun doesn’t flinch but it’s a close thing.

Jaemin has a habit of doing that, asking questions that hit far too close to home and that he _shouldn’t know._

“With what time,” Renjun responds, focusing on the screens before him, deliberately avoiding Jaemin’s eyes even when he was focused looking through them. Jaemin’s vision swings up then, Renjun sees his own image reflected back at him.

Renjun through Jaemin’s eyes.

It’s unverving. 

“Right, you’re married to the job,” Jaemin says offhandedly and with a sigh, as if he should have known. As if Renjun would _never—_

The word sting somewhere distant, somewhere buried.

“I know you and Donghyuck have whatever going on,” Renjun counters, “but some of us are into gainful employment and job security.”

_Some of us don’t have anybody left, not really._

“Aww, are you worried about third-wheeling,” Jaemin says, syrup sweet, like Donhyuck’s magic. “Do you ever feel like a third wheel, Injunnie?”

Those words hit somewhere fresh, somewhere that Renjun isn’t really prepared to acknowledge exists.

“Do you want me to say yes? Then no,” Renjun says, deceptively calm. He keeps his face neutral, his eyes clear as reaches over and turns on Renjun’s ear piece. “The party’s starting. Time to make your entrance.” He shoos Jaemin out.

When he’s finally gone Renjun sits down, puts his head in hands and breaths.

His memories wash over, but they’re blurry at the edges, like old photographs. But it’s not strange, Renjun thinks, because the memory is the same.

The feel of his magic humming across his skin as he’d killed the person that mattered.

***

The op goes smoothly until it doesn’t.

Because not one had told them that _he’d _be there.

Jaemin has eyes locked on Zhong Chenle and throughout the whole night the rest of the partygoers had flowed right around him . Like water flowing past a jutting rock.

“Who’s the kid,” Jaemin asks suddenly as he gets a little closer to their mark.

Renjun squints at the screen but the other figure currently talking to Zhong has his back turned, a little too far away to make out details anyways. “I didn’t catch his face when he came in. Can you get a closer look?”

The image bobs a little as Jaemin starts walking forward then it swings suddenly. Jaemin’s looking at the ground now.

“Jaemin?” Renjun asks. _What the hell was he doing?_

Jaemin’s vision swings up again, too fast. The image on the screens blurs a little bit.

“The boy with Chenle, can you see him—”

The image settles.

Renjun can’t breathe.

“—fuck my head.” Jaemin finishes but Renjun barely catches it.

it was—

_It was—_

“Fuck,” he utters, softly.

And he knows he shouldn’t, he knows what he promised Donghyuck, what he promised _Jaemin, _but Jamin’s words are still stinging where they bounce around in his chest and Renjun is a little too raw to care.

“_Nana_,” he hisses.

Magic flares bright. Renjun can hear it in the crackle and feedback of Jaemin’s ear piece, can feel a phantom pain at his wrists even this far apart.

Renjun knows what it is. Donghyuck’s magic. Donghyuck’s magic keeping Renjun from remembering, form _seeing._

And then Renjun realizes what he’ done.

“What did you say,” Jaemin says, voice cracking, in pain, in sadness, in emotion that Renjun hasn’t heard in a long time “What did you—”

“We’re done here,” Renjun says a little too fast, a little too desperate.

This was a mistake.

_He needs to remember—_

_No._

_No he didn’t._

_He’d promised_.

“We’re heading back _now_. Get out of there, you’re starting to draw attention.”

“The mission—” Jaemin says, voice still uneven, but some of the sadness is gone as walks further away from the party.

Good. Donghyck’s magic was working. “We’ve got more than enough data. We need to go.”

Jaemin gets back and he looks almost normal. He immediately starts helping to disassemble the screens and if it weren’t for the way that he keeps shaking his head and blinking his eyes, how he winces whenever he turns too quickly—Renjun could _almost _believe he was actually okay.

_Almost _

But Donghyuck’s magic is still a faint fog over Jaemin’s head and all Renjun can smell is sickly sweet.

Jaemin keeps looking at him too, out of the corner of his eye before looking away. He’s gearing himself up to ask something, Renjun can tell. 

They’re packed up, they’re ready to go, Jaemin clears his throat and Renjun braces himself as they leave the room.

“Do you know who that boy is?”

“Yes,” he says, deliberately even. “He has powers.”

“The files said every guest at the wedding would be a civilian.”

“That’s why I pulled you out,” Renjun responds, the lie coming easier now. “We aren’t equipped for confrontation—this was just supposed to be recon—”

“You called me _Nana,_” Jaemin says, quietly, reverently, as if speaking the words any louder would break the air around them.

Renjun freezes.

He _could_—

And this wouldn’t be on him, it’d be on Jaemin, on NEO—they were the ones who’d sent them on this mission.

And Renjun would _know—_

_He promised. _

“I didn’t.”

Donghyuck’s magic needed to take it away, why hadn’t it _taken it away—_Renjun had flared bright right after Renjun had spoke. He shouldn’t remember, or if he did, he shouldn’t _care. _

“I didn’t know you knew Jeno.” Jaemin is still quiet, but he’s looking at Renjun now. His eyes are shining, vivid, they’re _awake. _

“I don’t,” Renjun says, “Jaemin, _drop it.”_

_Please, _drop it.

_He promised. _

Jaemin doesn’t speak to him the entire way back.

***

They’re at NEO. Renjun’s anger and fear and unease had been doing nothing but building the entire way back and the smell of Donghyuck’s magic, still sticking to Jaemin’s skin like perfume is, only fueling it further and _how does he not notice it—_

He makes his way to Donghyuck’s room, his magic is an ocean storm in his bones, just waiting to be let out.

“Why weren’t we told Zhong Chenle had a superpowered bodyguard detail?” Renjun asks as soon as he’s flung the door open. “We weren’t prepared at all. Things could have gone really fucking wrong.”

_Things did go wrong, you don’t know what almost happened, what I could have let happen._

And Donghyuck must see some of that in Renjun’s eyes, the fear or the indecision, either way his face goes white. His fingers tense briefly into claws

“He doesn’t,” he trips over his words and Renjun takes a grim satisfaction from that. “He _shouldn’t. _It wasn’t in the file.”

Renjun could tell him, could watch the way Donghyuck’s eyes flicked over to Jaemin, could watch Jaemin startle, start asking question. His eyes were still shining.

He wonders if Donghyuck would use his magic right there and then if he did.

He wonders what he’d do if Donghyuck did.

His fingers twitch, he feels his magic seep up from his bones, just under the surface of his skin, not enough to give him away yet.

He could just _say it._

_Jisung._

_He’d promised. _

“Lucky I knew him. Huang Minghao,” he says instead. His hands go lax. “Teleportation powers, I’ve fought him before, he’s good enough to still be alive.”

He could, but he’d _promised. _

“Fuck—Huang Minghao, as in _Justin?” _Renjun can see Donghyuck practically deflate in relief. He nods. “He just contracted with NEXT, there’s not a reason for him to be—unless there’s a personal connection there. But there’s no record of that, either."

“Charge the client a penalty fee,” Renjun responds but he’s not even listening to his own words anymore. He just wants to get out of the room. “The risk level—if we’d known, NEO would have assigned the mission to one of the hyung teams.”

“I’ll raise it with Taeyong-hyung.”

Renjun almost turns to leave then but he sees Donghyuck stiffen up again, sees his fingers flex. His eyes flick from Jaemin back to him, back to Jaemin. 

Always back to Jaemin.

“But you’re not—neither of you got hurt?” his voice has an almost vulnerable edge to it but Renjun doesn't miss the way he stutters before he says _neither._

“Not a scratch,” Jaemin says.

Renjun turns and leaves. Jaemin doesn’t follow.

***

The next time he goes after Donghyuk is different.

_I’m going to kill him, _Renjun thinks and finds that he means it.

“Do you even know who you’re sending us after!” he shouts at him as he swings a fist, power pouring from it. Donghyuck deflects it easily and his desk flies across the room instead of him. Renjun hears the wood crack.

“I didn’t _know—they _didn’t know! We never would have sent you if we had!”

There’s something pleading in Donghyuck’s eyes and this is the first time that he's said much of anything as Renjun goes after him. He's usually silent, usually bears Renjun's anger like a burden he stoically weathered. It had always made Renjun angry but this_, _this makes Renjun _furious._

A fresh wave of magic burst from his bones so fast he feels like they're going to _shatter_. Fissure and crack and collapse into dust inside of him and then Renjun won't even have those to keep him up anymore. To keep him remembering.

He yells and aims another blow Donghyuck’s way.

***

Renjun sees Donghyuck carrying Jaemin to the medical ward on his way out of it, one of his ribs still aches, even if the fracture had already been healed. A parting gift from one of the guards as they’d dragged him out of Donghyuk’s room this last time.

Jaemin is pale and limp in his arms and Donghyuck freezes when he catches sight of Renjun.

“You—” he says but he’s nervous, a little scared. In a way that Renjun had only ever seen directed at Jaemin when—

“He’s starting to remember,” Renjun says, not a statement, not a question. A nebulous in-between.

_He promised._

Dongyuck’s lips tighten to a thin line, his hands tighten on Jaemin.

His silence is as much of an answer.

Renjun walks forward, walks past them, and doesn't look back.

***

Jaemin has to remember.

He _has _to remember—

_He’d promised._

Because Renjun’s memories smelled sweet sometimes, like rot—

Jaemin _needs _to remember.

_Because if _you _don’t remember, maybe I have the same band of dead magic around my head too._

_Maybe that was what I needed._

_And Donghyuck is so good at giving us what we need— _

Renjun wakes up with a gasp. Sweaty sheets pooled at his legs. The moon is out again. He can’t remember what he’d been dreaming about.

He looks across the room, Jaemin isn’t back from the medical ward.

He wonders if Donghyuck had had too—

He closes his eyes and his memories slowly seep into his brain, like watercolor on paper.

***

Jaemin comes back the next night.

He smells sweet.

Renjun doesn’t really sleep after that.

***

He dreams of Mark.

In one dream he cleaves Mark in two, in another he snaps his neck.

Sometimes he uses magic, sometimes he doesn’t.

And sometimes, he doesn’t kill Mark at all.

Renjun doesn’t know why but somehow that’s the saddest dream of them all.

This isn’t strange to him.

It’s familiar, just like the smell of rot.

“You’re dead,” Renjun says in a dream one day, where Mark is still alive, but where the stain of Renjun’s magic is still imprinted on his jaw, blistered handprints on his skin. “I killed you. Were you proud of me? I thought you didn’t think I could do it, but you didn’t even look surprised, at the end.”He feels laughter bouncing around in his chest, pressing up against his ribs, like bubbles in boiling water. “Maybe it was just me who didn’t think I could do it.”

Mark doesn’t say anything but Renjun blinks once and his magic burns are gone. 

“I miss you, you told me not to, but I still do. I outgrew you and I wish I didn’t. I wish we could go back. I wish we could—”

He stops because Mark smiles at him, like he always used to.

“Oh Renjun,” he says, “I never left.”

_Oh, _Renjun thinks, _that's right. _

Renjun crumbles, a pit opens up underneath his feet, he’s falling.

He closes his eyes. 

***

He doesn’t remember any of his dreams anymore.

But his memories feel like they’re fracturing.

***

“Things weren’t always like this,” Renjun says one day, “It used to be…when there were still five of us. We were…”

He remembers Jisung, remembers his smile, his laugh, but then that smile melts into Mark, melts into Jeno, like paints mixing together. His memory turns clouded, he can’t pick them apart anymore.

_This isn’t strange_, he finds himself thinking.

“There’s never been five of us,” Jaemin says, impatient. “Not even altogether. You me, Donghyuck, Jeno. But Jeno left before you came.”

“Really? My bad,” he says, but he’s not really paying attention anymore, he’s trying to pick apart his memories, keep them separate, but they’re so blended now that—

“You’re a terrible secret-keeper, you know.”

“It doesn’t matter what I say to you,” Renjun retorts, a little mean, but he can’t help it, “because you won’t remember it anyway.”

But _he _remembers, he’ll _always remember_

Donghyuck took Jaemin’s memories away, but Renjun won’t let him take his. He owes it to them, to himself, to remember. He _needs _to remember. He’s not Jaemin, he can’t live like that.

He _couldn’t _live like that.

He _needed _something.

Donghyuck knew that.

“But it matters to _you,” _Jaemin says. “You wouldn’t keep bringing it up if it didn’t.”

The words are surprising enough to rip Renjun’s attention away from his memories, enough to make him laugh. For the first time in what feels like lifetimes. Renjun had almost forgotten what it felt like.

“I forgot you think the distinction’s important.”

“I don’t. But you do.”

Renjun hates the way that Jaemin’s words hit in just the right places sometimes.

“I’m not trying to kill Donghyuck, not really.”

_I’m going to kill him, _Renjun thinks, testing out the words in his head. They’re empty, like his magic, like his memories, but they haven’t always been.

But Jaemin doesn’t need to know that.

“Could’ve fooled me.”

Maybe he did know that.

“He owes me,” Renjun says even if he knows Jaemin won’t understand. He doesn’t remember. “You don’t get it. Donghyuck—you don’t know what his powers are really like."

_You never smell the sweet of them, the rot._

_How can you not smell it?_

“So explain it to me, I won’t remember it anyway, isn’t that what you just said? Doesn’t that make me the perfect listener?” There’s an edge to Jaemin’s voice. A challenge. Maybe he was getting tired of it all too. Renjun was tired. He was so, so tired.

“That’s not the same thing at all.”

_He promised._

His mouth keeps moving anyways.

“The mission last month, with the guy who was stealing from his boss—do you remember what I said to you, on the train ride back?”

_They both promised._

“Didn’t I sleep the entire time,” Jaemin huffs in impatience, “What does that have to do with anything?”

_Of course he didn’t remember. Renjun was the only one who did. _

“You don’t remember, of course you don’t remember. What did I expect. He remade you so perfectly.” It slips out. He can’t filter the blame out of his voice, the hurt. But he doesn’t even know who it’s directed at anymore, Jaemin, Donghyuck, _himself._

Jisung flashes in his mind, blurry at the edges.

_Huh, _Renjun thinks, _maybe he remade me too._

It isn’t a strange thought.

“It’s his duty to his creation. Remember that _you _asked for this.”

Not like Renjun, he’d never—

“_You _chose this, I didn’t. I won’t let go—”

“You aren’t making any sense,” Jaemin almost growls. His eyes scrunch, confusion and disbelief. “Just tell me this. If you’re so unhappy here, why do you stay?”

Renjun feels his lips stretch into a smile but he feels like puking.

He smells rot.

“Love.”

***

_I’m going to kill him_

But his thoughts are empty and his attempt is halfhearted at best.

He can’t stop thinking about how Mark had asked him to use his magic, when he killed him.

No, wait.

That wasn’t right.

That was strange.

Mark had asked him…had asked him _not _to.

Pain lances in his head, the smell of sweet is cloying. Guards come and subdue him easily like they always do. A guard tugs him one way but he catches a glimpse of Jaemin entering the room.

“Jisung,” Renjun calls out amid his swirling, blotting, memories.

_He has to remember, he _has _too_

“Who is Jisung!”

Jaemin flinches.

***

_I’m going to kill him_

And even when Jaemin stands before him, even when he throws up a shield of magic—Renjun means it.

“Move,” he says his magic is seeped out of his bones, his skin, is swirling around his hands now, even as Renjun feels the ghosts of Donghyuck’s shackles on them. “This is between me and Donghyuck.”

“Don’t you get it,” Jaemin says, “it’s never been just you two. Don’t you get it? If it involves Donghyuck, it involves me. If it involves you, it involves me. We’re all we have left.”

But that was a lie, Jaemin just didn’t know it.

“Jaemin,” Donghyuck says behind him. Caution. A warning.

_ I told you it was a lie _Renjun thinks.

“Don’t _you _get it,” he spits instead, “When I have nothing left then I’ll finally—”

_But no, _he shakes his head, _that wasn’t right. I already have nothing left. _

So he attacks, and attacks, and doesn’t care that Jaemin’s bleeding, that _he’s_ making him bleed.

Jaemin looks at him from behind his shield, shock and incredulous disbelief. Renjun wants to laugh. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t _want_ to.

Donghyuck had made Jaemin, Jaemin had _let _him.

But Jaemin needed to remember, he _needed _to—

Because—because—

He’s almost there, almost through his shield.

Maybe then Renjun could—

_“Mark Lee,” _Donghyuck screams.

Renjun eyes roll into the back of his head, he falls, and as he does his memories shatter.

***

He wakes in the medical ward,

Pristine white walls. Antiseptic.

His eyes sweep the room but he knows he won’t see anybody—

Donghyuck. In the corner.

His eyes widen.

He remembers the fight. Remembers Jaemin. Remembers what Donghyuck had said.

He tries to think back, to think of Mark and Jisung, and Jeno but his head’s a mess he—he doesn’t even know if they’re real anymore.

He doesn’t know what _is_ real anymore. Doesn’t know if Donghyuck had made them too.

That was Donghyuck’s power, after all.

“What did you do to me,” Renjun says, curling in on himself, hands at his head. His fingers dig crescents into his scalp.

Donghyuck flinches at the words as if they were a blow from Renjun’s magic, his face goes fragile with hurt but Renjun is a little too past caring. He smells nothing but sweet, but _rot, _he’s swimming in it, he wants to puke. A cloud of thick syrup that fogs his brain, drenches his memories, until they’re bloated mottled things.

They’re too swollen now, his memories, it’s too much pressure, they’re going to burst his head open. 

“Renjun—” Donghyuk starts, voice that nervous tremulous tone he gets sometimes when he’s dealing with Renjun, as if Renjun was one sharp word away from breaking. “Something…something has to change—”

“You promised me!” Renjun shouts as the tears start coming, dotting the white covers grey.

“YOU PROMISED ME!” he shouts louder. “You promised you’d let me keep them! You promised they _happened_!_”_

And he hates it, hates that he’s screaming, hates that he’s crying, hates that he doesn’t even know which of his memories are real anymore, hates that everything is tinted viscous and sweet.

Hates that he _is_ breaking.

Donghyuck walks forward, Renjun flinches back and he _hates _it.

_I’m going to kill you _he thinks, _I’m going to—_

Donghyuck reaches for him, and Renjun lets him. Donghyuck pulls him in and he hates that too. Hates that he melts into Donghyuck’s arms, into the hand that brushes away his own hands at his head, the trembling fingers that run their way through his hair instead.

“What did you—” Renjun starts again, but his voice is weak.

“Shh,” Donghyuck shushes him, “shh.”

He shifts, Renjun lips brush his forehead, they linger.

Donghyuck is crying too.

“I gave you what you needed,” he says, “I’m sorry.”

Renjun stiffens. He feels Donghyuck’s magic flare.

He smells rot, and then nothing.

He remembers.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, there you have it :)
> 
> Future metropolis heart was wonderfully vague and ambiguous in a lot of things and Jaemin was about the most unreliable narrator you could get, so for this remix I tried to take all those characteristics and amp them up by like 10 levels. Which is how we got Renjun, the character who is supposed to know everything but-at least in this version-definitely does _not_. Hopefully it was confusing while still being interesting and not just confusing lol Let me know what you all think!
> 
> Also, pyrophane you mentioned that you were deliriously sick when you wrote future metropolis heart and while I wasn't quite at delirious I _was_ sick when I wrote the bulk of this remix too, I thought it was a funny coincidence xD


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